Friday, March 29, 2013

This Week: Battlefield 4, Bioshock Infinite, a new way to
rate your graphics card and more!

The Battlefield 4 hype machine's been started with the
release of a 17 minute video showing single player gameplay as well as details
about platforms and special editions.
The video also highlights the new Frostbite 3.0 game engine which promises
a better lighting and weather system as well as new animations and of course
what every father wishes for his son, "Improved,efficient destruction"

If you're dumb
enough, I mean interested in pre-orders you can get a special
"Premium" expansion pack and if you do it through Origin you'll get
additional exclusive content from their
"Digital Deluxe edition" .
Release is scheduled for the fall on PC and current generation
consoles. That begs the question of how
console sales of the game will be affected by a refresh of both major console
platforms in the same time period.

I chafe at the word "Premium" almost as badly as I
do with the word "Pre-Order"
Ask anyone who bought SimCity or Diablo 3 on Pre-order if they got their
money's worth. Fool me once shame on
you, Fool me twice EA? Don't think so. I'm happy to wait for a sale six months later
or better yet just skip it altogether. In
case you're still interested, pre-order price is set at 59.99 across all three
platforms (Xbox, PS3 and PC) with
Gamefly offering a 20%off coupon. Hmm, discounts on a pre-order this far out? I'm suspicious.

BioShock Infinite has launched and if you buy a physical
copy of the game from Irrational games they'll get it to you for 1.99
shipping. Amazon's got free shipping by
the way and Steam will download it to your hard drive today. If you want it it's going to set you back $60
no matter who you buy it from. So far
reviews have been decent with a 94/100 reviewer score on Metacritic and an 8.9
user score although some reviewers have been a little disappointed in the pace
of the game.

If you've always wanted to "play a movie" it seems
2013 is your year. It started with the
Walking dead Game in 2012 which was
designed to be a companion to the popular television series on AMC. Released by Telltale it follows an episodic
formula similar to their recent "Back to the Future" series.

Now we have two new titles trying to cash in on the
trend. Defiance is a game based on the upcoming television series on SyFy
channel of the same name. Star Trek: The Video Game launches April
23rd just weeks ahead of StarTrek: Into
Darkness set to hit theaters May 17th.
While not a direct adaptation characters, voice acting and design are
all consistent with the movie. Defiance will be available April 2nd at
$60 and Star Trek: The Video game
will set you back $50.

If you happen to be taking in a ball game at Coca-Cola park
in Allentown PA. you may want to check out the men's room. They're installing video games at the men's
urinals that activate when you approach them.
Don't ask about the controller. I
bet they're going to sell a lot more large sodas from now on.

Are you one of the lucky few who already has your OUYA
console? They started shipping to the
kickstarter backers but the rest of us will have to wait till June 4th to pick
ours up for $99. Early adopters of the
Tegra 3 powered android console will find a library of 104 games so far from a
deep bench of 8000 developers. The
console will also run apps like XBMC and Flixster. The games are all free to try out but
nothing's free forever so have some plastic money at the ready once you run
into that free-to-play paywall.

I hesitated to include this last bit of news in this week's
report. That's primarily due to my distaste
for gaming benchmarks and the subjective analysis that comes from them. Weeks' worth of fanboy articles have been
written based on nothing more than a bias toward a particular brand and 1 Frame
per second.

So here comes Ryan Shrout of PCPer who's been racking his
brains out trying to come up with a different way of quantifying graphics card
performance. In the process it's also
showed up how weak AMD's crossfire multi-card GPU performance really is. You have to give it to the guys at PCPer,
AMD's been a major sponsor but that didn't stop them from calling it like they
saw it. In fact it's because of that
candor that I had any interest at all.

Without trying to summarize 16000 words of what Ryan's been
up to I'd direct you to his article
for the specifics of his new process of evaluating graphics performance. As I understand it, instead of basing ratings on data that hasn't made it to your
monitor yet like FRAPS this method is based on what you actually see. It's called Frame Rating and uses an
external capture card to collect the data then process it and display the results graphically on-screen without interfering with the system being tested.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Right up front I'll admit that I'm probably not telling you
anything you don't already know. Just
point your confused friends to this page when they're wondering why you're
tearing up the furniture after your 150th round of Battlefield 3.

This list is ordered from what I feel is the most egregious
to the annoying. Your mileage may
vary. Too much of any of them puts the furniture in
jeopardy.

1. Cheats - This one's easy and we've all suffered them. Aimbots, world hacks, stat boosters and the
pond scum who love them. Both
Battlefield and Call of Duty are rife with these self-centered morons who ruin
it for the rest of us. There's just
nothing like having hundreds of hours of experience in a game and getting pwned
50 times by some 12 year old with a $10 hack.
You can be sure that if the developer leaves an opening someone's going
to exploit it.

2. Lag - You can't help this if say you're in North America
and the server's in Germany. Adding more

servers in a region can fix it but that rarely happens. Which is probably why you're crossing an ocean
to play in the first place.

It can be almost imperceptible showing itself at those times
when you know you should have hit what you were aiming at but didn't because it
really wasn't there anymore. Other times
it can be more obvious with an annoyingly slow frame rate. One of the worst cases you can suffer is the rubber
banding effect. This is where your character keeps getting
reset in the same spot as the server tries to compensate for excessive lag.

Online games can be sensitive to player induced lag and many
have instituted a maximum ping time to the client to combat it. Most dedicated game servers will try to tune the game performance to the
slowest connected client. Problem is,that can lead to the rubber banding effect so you're more likely to run into a maximum ping restriction.

3. Game Server Admins - Most online game servers are
privately run with only a handful of "official"

developer controlled
examples. As such you have to deal with
a game environment that doesn't necessarily follow the official template. Ridiculously high ticket counts, weapon
restrictions and draconian banning practices can ruin an otherwise good game.

4. Player Matching - Call of Duty and Team Fortress 2 try to
do it but never do it well, Battlefield 3 doesn't even try which means you
could end up like a duck in a shooting gallery if you don't check out the leader
boards before you join.

You'd think
player matching would be a good thing but you usually end up with a bunch of
players at a much higher level than you
anyway. I prefer choosing my own
servers but it would be nice if games like Battlefield 3 made it easier to figure
out who you're playing against before you get in a game. Something along the line of an average player
level indicator or a color code in the server list would be helpful. Are you Listening EA??

5. Who you have to play with - It'd be nice if everyone
followed the rules and did what they were supposed to do but they don't. Cheaters, noobs and people who just take the
game too seriously can turn a game sour fast.
A few here or there can be safely ignored but in numbers you may as well
give up. It's why I prefer co-op.

6. Game tweaks - BF3 is the biggest offender. Every patch contains "fixes" that
change multiple game elements. Weapon
effectiveness , map elements or even the availability of equipment can be
affected which makes every logon a roll of the dice. Hmm, maybe that's why Battlefield's developer
is named "Dice." In their
constant fiddling all they do is throw off the game balance and annoy players. Worse it's usually done to support new DLC
even if you don't buy it.

7. " Premium" - From reducing the amount of
available servers for "normal" players to special "events"
that give an unfair advantage. This is
the most blatant evidence of a software publisher's money machine in
action. From "double experience
weekends" to early access to new maps this tactic will allow you to buy
your way to the top of the leaderboards if you have the scratch.

8. DLC - Make no mistake, this is nothing but a money
machine for the publishers. A few new
maps and weapons may be nice to have but they end up skewing the whole game for
everyone else. DLC or downloadable
content is meant to extend the life of an old game. The more DLC available the weaker the core
game is. The mark of a great game is re-playability
without a bunch of tacky add-ons. If you
have to keep adding content to keep things interesting you've either held
something back at launch or your game is boring. 'Nuff said.

9. Huge Game updates -I realize that games have to be
constantly fixed but there's no reason that a game that is 5 GB fully installed
needs a 4GB patch every 3 months or EVER.
Publishers like to "preload" DLC and extra features whether
you buy them or not. So come patch day,
everyone suffers. Expect more of this as
the new PS4 plans to "preload" full installations to your console
based on what Sony "thinks" you'd like to buy. Hope you're nowhere near your Internet Download
cap!

10. Slow game joins - This could be lag but more likely it's
just too much preload going on. It
wouldn't be such a big deal but sometimes the delay is so bad that the game
ends before you get a chance to play.
You get tired of seeing "Loading" after a while.

Some of you may think I've missed one, namely "noobs." Hey, like the say, we were all noobs once. Instead of cursing them in the chat window
just point them toward the unranked servers to practice on. Otherwise let them learn the hard way...as
practice targets.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

There's two types of games I tend to play the most often and
it's no surprise that one of them is a good First Person Shooter. The other is a good driving game but since
there's been few really good titles and I can't afford a good control setup to
adequately experience them I spend a lot of time shooting at virtual
people.

I like realism but I know it's still a game and that short
of a Star Trek style holodeck I can't expect too much. Still I want an interesting environment to
look at and challenging opponents that have just as much chance to win as I do.

Angry Birds and The Simpsons: Tapped Out may be popular with
the masses but aside from a convenient time sink they don't do much for
me. They're considered "casual games"
and after awhile they stop being fun and start turning into a career once you
pass a certain level. That's their hook
and it's something I recognize in games in general. How obvious that hook is separates a good
game from an also-ran.

In the past few months I've spent a lot of time with
Borderlands 2 and Battlefield 3. During that time I've been trying to identify
exactly what it was that made one more engaging than the other. A good game draws you in and before you know
it entire evenings have evaporated without notice.

Borderlands is like that.
Both the original and the sequel have this subtle quality of being just
challenging enough to keep you coming back but not so easy as to become
repetitive. The story is as over the
top as you can get but does a great job of setting the mood.

A hallmark of the series is the seamless gameplay experience
between single player and cooperative mode. The ability to help out your friends on a
particularly difficult single player mission is nothing short of
brilliant. Another nice feature is how your accomplishments follow you regardless of
the play mode. That's far more valuable
than any badge on somebody's leaderboard.

Battlefield 3 is a whole different story. It's a game with split personalities. A single player mode that had no bearing on
multiplayer and seems like it's just tacked on.
I've had "epic moments"
with BF3 but most of the time I'm just waiting for the ticket count to drop to
zero.

It's this trait that's most like its Activision competitor, Call
of Duty. You could literally spend days in the single player mode and have
nothing to show for it when you were done.
The gameplay is very linear much like Call of Duty but without the
saving grace of a good story.

Battlefield's multiplayer was a completely different
experience and the real focus of the Battlefield series since the release of
Battlefield 2. And it's obvious with
features, achievements and rewards only available in its online multiplayer
mode. Too bad Dice couldn't get a handle
on the cheats, hacks and glitches that plague the game.

I've spent over 200 hours playing BF3 and about half of that
on Borderlands 2 so far. Yes I know
they're vastly different games and have a different focus but the success of
one shows the failure of the other.
They're both FPS games and emphasize the development of your player
character. Battlefield does it with rank
and unlocks while Borderlands does it with level and stat boosters.

The difference is that Borderlands concentrates on the
gaming experience where Battlefield concentrates on the game environment.

Nobody in their right mind would ever say that Borderlands
was anything but an arcade shooter.
Invisible rocks block your path, physics are a mere suggestion and controls
can be vague. Battlefield, on the other
hand, strives to be as realistic as possible with highly detailed scenery and
physics effects. Aim and shoot and
chances are you'll hit something in Borderlands, Battlefield makes you seriously consider things
like bullet drop, armor and firing position if you want to hit anything smaller
than the broadside of a barn.

That's ok but it's tough for developers to keep making near
photo realistic environments with all their physics along for the ride. It may be great for selling DLC every 6
months but it ruins re-playability. After awhile it gets tedious when you constantly
reminded that you're just in a very pretty sandbox. Play Battlefield 3 and you're guaranteed to know more about the map than your
opposition. Borderlands 2 is the
reverse.

I've mentioned before
that Battlefield 3's multiplayer experience has been going downhill for the
past year. If I buy a DLC pack it might
extend my interest another month or so but ultimately I'll get burned out on it
too. With cheating so rampant it's
roughly a 1 in 5 chance of having a good multiplayer game in BF3. Worse, where DLC in Borderlands extends your
co-op and single player game, DLC in BF3 offers nothing to its single player
mode.

In short Battlefield is being supported by a regular parade
of DLC and paid add-ons like the shortcut kits.
Borderlands 2 has these as well but they enhance an already good gaming
experience instead of trying to crutch a marginal one.

Don't get me wrong, I like Battlefield 3 when it's
good. It's just that it's not good that
often and the only response from EA/Dice is to buy more DLC.

I don't believe 2K/Gearbox is driven by any greater humanitarian
philosophy but they have made a more playable game.

Games are about having fun regardless of the motivations of their creators are. If I'm not enjoying the experience what's the
point?

I mean, why should I invest tens of hours in something that
only serves to aggravate me. Battlefield
does that now and the blame lies squarely in Dice's lap. They made a good looking game with great
potential but never fully delivered. Adding insult to injury they relentlessly push
DLC and subscriptions to the exclusion of all else.

If you're going to have multiple ways to experience a game
they need to be seamless and I don't mean forcing me onto a website just to start
the game. Who cares how realistic the
explosions are if the game modes and thus anything I accomplish in them are
completely isolated from each other?

This is the same mistake Call of Duty makes over and over
again. It has a great story and good
looks but the Multiplayer is stuck back in 2002 and is easily exploited by
those with less than honorable intentions.
In short it's not much fun for anyone but a hardcore player or a cheat.

Battlefield 3's design comes closest to Call of Duty's and
makes the same mistakes with the only difference being where each game's
strengths lie. Call of Duty is about the
Story, Battlefield is about the environment but in the end they fail in the
same way.

Borderlands 2 is like playing a character in a comic
book. It's a good looking game but it's
not about a game engine or realistic
bullet drop. it's about having fun
blasting bad guys with goofy looking weapons.
All of this framed within an interesting story and a unified single and
multiplayer experience.

If I buy DLC for Borderlands it's because I want more of
what I already have. Which is exactly
why I won't buy it for Battlefield 3. In
short, I'm not satisfied with what I got from the core game so why would I
throw more money at it in hopes of a better experience?

I'm hopeful that
Battlefield 4 will learn from the mistakes of its predecessor but EA is all
about the money machine these days. That
means it will probably look great and you'll be able to count the rivets on
every tank. It just won't be very
interesting past that point.

Dice will continually fiddle with the physics and EA will
push them to release DLC packs to keep the money machine humming along and I'll
probably be writing the same article a year from now.

Friday, March 22, 2013

IGN in cahoots with EA?, Steam Early Access, Origin likes
you and more!

First we get movie reviews on a gaming website now it
appears that gaming news icon IGN may (or may not) have exclusive access to
content from the upcoming Battlefield 4.
The Battlefield 4 website went live Wednesday and somebody dug into its
code and found a snippet suggesting that IGN already had a promotional article written proclaiming "IGN
predicting Battlefield 4 to be game of the year". A check of the site today shows no evidence
of the code but the suggestion that IGN may be partnering with EA to promote
the game is a natural leap. Whether or
not is true is something entirely different.
It does call into question how impartial a game review can really be
when there's such a close relationship with a publisher. As though movie reviews weren't bad
enough. By the way the BF4 website is here. If you have an Origin account and log into
the website you'll earn the special "I Was There" in-game dog tag to
show all your jealous friends...

Ever wish you had a say in how your favorite game got
developed? Well Valve has just launched
Steam Early Access where gamers can play games that are still in
development. Most of the games are of
the indie variety but include titles like ARMA 3. It's an interesting opportunity born out of
Valves community based Greenlight program.
Smaller developers rarely have the resources to fully flesh out a game
before launch so getting the fans involved could produce a better product. Hopefully the free help translates into discounts
and freebies for the participants.

In case you haven't noticed, EA's Origin service is having a
week long sale that ends March 26th on over 200 games. Some are up to 70% off with Crysis 3 and Dead
Space 3 around $30 US and the BF3 Premium subscription now half price at
$24.99. That's almost funny, now that
BF4 is announced who cares about Premium anyway?

They call it an "Origin Player Appreciation
Sale" I call it damage control
after the SimCity debacle. Who cares,
take advantage while you can.

Seems Battlefield 4 isn't the only game IGN has a sneak peak
at. They've released a glowing review of
the upcoming Bioshock:Infinite due out March 26th. Hailing this latest installment of the
Bioshock universe as

"A stunning
original world of retro-sci-fi technology and gorgeous scenery. A cast of fully
fleshed-out, memorable characters who deliver real emotional impact."

I don't know about you but with all this gushing going on in
reviews that sound like they came right out of the publisher's PR department I
have to wonder how impartial IGN really is.
It's not a stretch to suggest that publishers may be willing to give early
access to a review site if they know they're among friends. Even flaws seem to be glossed over in favor
of phrases like, "You Will Believe a City Can Fly"

Really? Even bad reviews
of games like Medal of Honor:Warfighter try to soften the blow by acting
apologist and highlighting irrelevant bright spots like this from IGN's review
of Warfighter.

" Warfighter
strives for this by giving you a genuine impression of what it’s like to live
as a Tier 1 operator, the elite operatives at the center of the modernized
Medal of Honor series. It’s clear from the first cutscene all the way to the
end credits that developer Danger Close has the utmost respect for the
extraordinary skills and bravery of these soldiers.

If Medal of Honor extended the same level of
respect to its players, Warfighter might have accomplished more than its
numerous significant failures and lack of player agency has allowed." from IGN's review of Warfighter

Ok, the last paragraph was somewhat useful but it's a negative
review, so what's up with all this about "striving to give a genuine
impression." How's that even
possible in a game so flawed that even EA (the publisher) had to admit it.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Today's installment allows you to eavesdrop on a discussion about
how rampant cheating has brought down an otherwise decent game. What follows is too average players with
hundreds of hours of experience discussing why the game no longer holds much
interest.

A little background first:

When Battlefield 3 launched it was one of the most
anticipated FPS's in recent history.
Building on a rabid fan base stretching back a decade, it introduced the
most realistic gaming engine (Frostbite 2.0) any FPS fan had seen to that
point. It continues to be the engine for
other EA titles like Medal of Honor and Need For Speed due to it's realistic
physics effects and visuals.

Unfortunately along with all that progress came the hacks,
exploits and the cheaters who love them.
In the Year and half that's gone by EA/Dice have made only cursory
overtures to deal with cheats. Instead, focusing
on DLC, the Premium subscription and purchasable upgrades. Game hacks are so prevalent in Battlefield 3
that it's said an average server can expect to have at least 10% of its players
engaging in some manner of cheat. Entire businesses have sprung up with their
only product being game hacks for BF3 and EA/Dice have done virtually nothing
to stop it.

In short EA's decided
that cheats are best dealt with by the community that plays the game. Unfortunately they've given them few tools to
combat the problem.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Ea apologizes for SimCity but no refunds!, New Borderlands 2
character coming, What's an OUYA? and more!

The big news out of EA this week? If you found yourself looking at a blank
dialog box instead of playing SimCity, EA's got a consolation prize for
you. They're going to offer you one of
their downloadable games for free. Watch
your email March 18th for details on how and what you'll be getting for the
frustration you suffered last week.

SimCity developer Maxis' GM Lucy Bradshaw was quoted last
Friday (March 8th) as saying the reason for the outage was.."a lot more
people logged on than we expected. More
people played and played in ways we never saw in beta....OK, we agree that was
dumb but we are committed to fixing it."

That's all very well and nice and it's refreshing to hear an EA developer admitting the inadequacies of
their beta programs. But only time will
tell if they've learned from their mistakes.
Time will also tell if the "free game" is salve for the wound
or just a burnt offering. Didn't see
anything about a refund in there BTW.

The following
comments come from the referenced EA article...

"Why do I want another game to play on your obviously
buggy and unreliable Origin service? Giving me another game that has a good
chance of not working due to your servers isn't going to make me happy. Givi ng
me an offline version of SimCity will

"Maybe you should think about NOT having this stupid
Always Online DRM crap? Yeah? Might solve the problem of bad design and bad
decisions on your part. "

More Borderlands 2 DLC in the works and it appears we'll be
getting a sixth playable character.
October saw the introduction of Gaige a female cyborg mechromancer which
seems like a cross between a siren and a commando. At last weekend's South by Southwest Gearbox
hinted at a new character which appears to be focused on Melee combat much like
Brick in the first game.

These are DLC only, however, and not available to premium
subscription members which makes me wonder what the point is of having it if I
have to keep buying extra stuff? I
wonder if Gearbox is looking at Borderlands 2 like EA looks at Battlefield
3. You know, a money machine? If so it doesn't bode well for Borderlands
3...

Ah well, wait a year and you'll get it all for $60 on a Steam
sale....

So are you one of those people looking to break out of the
shackles of traditional console gaming with their high prices, subscription
models and closed ecosystems? Then OUYA
may have your alternative. OUYA is an
Android based gaming console that will go for around $100 when it officially
launches in June. Funded by a successful
Kickstarter project started by Julie Uhrman and Yves Behar back in August 2012 the
project managed to attract 8.5 Million US. That was 8 times their target by the
way.

The news this week was the announcement that Kickstarter backers
can expect to see their new OUYA boxes show up by March 28th.

What's significant about OUYA isn't just the migration of
android based games from mobile devices to your HD TV. It's the freedom afforded to developers to
develop without the restrictions that come from other platforms like Xbox and
Playstation. OUYA claims that, "Anyone can make a game, every OUYA console
is a developer kit. No need to purchase
a license or an expensive SDK.."

The platform is more of a boon for indie game developers
than even Valve's Steam can
offer. The question remains whether this
will be the functional alternative to mainstream consoles or end up a hobbyist
platform for the true believer. If it
becomes the Linux equivalent to Windows in the console gaming world the result
will likely be less than revolutionary.

The other issue to consider is that with a few exceptions,
Android based games are made for mobile devices with 4" screens. That may not translate well to your 50"
HDTV. That is, unless you're ok with
the bulk of your gaming looking like something from the original Sony
Playstation. Of course that can change
with time but developers will need to ramp up their efforts if OUYA has any
chance of being a force in the console market.

In the end if OUYA serves no other purpose than to soften
the draconian licensing and development practices of the Sony and Microsoft's
of the world that's a good thing.

If you've been wondering why Nvidia's been shut out of the
next generation consoles your answer may finally be here. In a nutshell, Sony and Microsoft are cheap
and AMD is too. Apparently Nvidia passed
on the opportunity to be in the next generation of consoles because the big 2
weren't offering enough scratch for the effort.

" (They) didn't
want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay",
Tony Tomasi Nvidia SVP of content

AMD came in cheaper so they got the gig. Sony claims it wasn't about the technology
just the price. That's really all there
is to it.

I guess it had something to do with the "support
offline group play" feature that got a new phone from Samsung on the
gaming news radar this week. Yes the
highly anticipated Samsung S4 has been officially announced. It's a phone that lets you do things by
waving your fingers at it. It's set for
release at the end of April. Must be a
slow news week...

Friday, March 8, 2013

This week produced not one but two major product launches
with 2 huge failures. Yes I'm talking
about SimCity and Tomb Raider.

Of course in the case of SimCity the memory of the nearly
disastrous launch of last year's Diablo 3 came racing back to the gaming
community's consciousness. And why not?
The failure was almost identical and the recovery even more clumsy. As of today SimCity is still suffering the
effects with EA disabling functionality such as achievements, leaderboards and region filters. Developer Maxis is racing to add servers and
patch issues but still seem to be in a state of denial.

"This has been an exciting and challenging week for the
team here at Maxis, the culmination of years of planning and development. We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of
support and enthusiasm from our fans which has made it even more upsetting for
us that technical issues have become more prominent in the last 24
hours..."

Outpouring of support? Most of the forum posts I've seen
aren't exactly supportive...

"How many times in the last few years have games with online
features or requirements been screwed up when the servers became overloaded?
You’d think that someone in the games industry would have noticed this by now.."
From a comment on Forbes

"I've been trying to play for the
last 4 hours and still haven't even started my first city. I have been a die
hard Simcity addict for going on 18 years. Not any longer. I am fed up with it
and wish I hadn't wasted £65 on it."
From a comment onTechcrunch

When
even Amazon has to suspend sales of your game I have to question what they mean
by "years of planning and development."

What metrics did EA and Maxis use to plan for launch
day? Did anyone even look at those pre-order numbers? Was nothing learned
from two closed betas? Beta players
reported slow load times which resulted in Maxis adding a few more servers. Even
in a tightly controlled sandbox the cracks were starting to show. So I suppose two closed betas were considered an adequate load test. Apparently not when thousands stared at an empty dialog box
when the game went live.

So far the biggest news to come out of this debacle is Maxis'
GM Lucy Bradshaw falling on the sword via a rumored internal memo that
states...

"I'd like to say that it's not fair — that the game score (from
polygon.com) shouldn't be punished for a server problem, But it is
fair."

"SimCity is an online
game and critics and consumers have every right to expect a smooth experience
from beginning to end, I and the Maxis team take full responsibility to deliver
on our promise."

Couple that
with EA "suspending marketing" of the game due to the continuing server issues and no
matter how great the game is, the failure of the launch will forever color
it.

Now, let's
address the elephant in the room.

All of this
trouble, all of this pain comes from one source and that lands squarely in the
lap of EA. You can't even blame Maxis
for this one because we all know EA's penchant for sticking always-on DRM where
it doesn't belong. That's what sunk
SimCity's launch period.

There is
absolutely no reason that any game from any publisher should require a
persistent Internet connection. At least
not for a single player game.

I've said it
before, the Internet is not ubiquitous when it comes to access and having to be
constantly connected offers the consumer nothing. It does however offer publishers like EA the
opportunity to intrude into a gaming experience they were never invited to.

Real time
ads, dynamic updates and unwanted invitations to online promotions are the real
focus. EA wants to turn every product it
sells into a perpetual money machine but they can't do that without absolute
control of the experience.

Want DLC?
you're going to have to buy it from EA.
Forget about community contributed maps or character tweaks.

Think about
it, when's the last time you heard about a Battlefield 3 mod? Remember Battlefield 1942? That game got new life with a community
supported mod called Desert Combat and spawned the fortunes of developer DICE.

The only
time an online connection was required was for multiplayer gameplay. It wasn't to annoy you with popup ads for new
DLC or track your every move. It was
just simple connectivity to other players.

That's as it
should be but it isn't anymore. It's
disappointing to not be able to play a multiplayer game when servers go offline
but the single player experience should NEVER be affected by it.

Take another
popular franchise that EA has applied the same formula to.

Need for
Speed started out as a single player game with later versions allowing
multiplayer gaming via LAN connections.
As time went on EA began requiring connections to their servers that forced
players onto web servers even if they were playing in the same room. It's culminated in the requirement for
players to log into an interface called the "Autolog" that forces you
to be online even if you're playing in single player mode. There are Need for speed titles just a few years
old that are now unplayable in multiplayer because EA has shut down the
servers. How far behind can single
player modes be?

(By the way, if Autolog sounds familiar it's the predecessor of Battlefield
3's Battlelog. The web based interface
that disables any type of gameplay unless you're logged into EA servers. )

If we're going to be required to connect to a web server
even to play a game in "offline" mode then we have to trust that EA
will perpetually provide access which history shows they won't. That puts your $60 to $120 (addl. DLC
or Subscription cost) investment in jeopardy. It's like selling you a car but giving you
keys that will only start it for five years.
After that even though the car is perfectly fine it will never run again
because of your now useless keys.
Leaving you with nothing to show for your money.

So it seems that last week's comment by EA CFO Blake J.
Jorgensen caused an uproar loud enough to cause him to issue a
"clarification." concerning
micro-transactions. Jorgensen claimed he
was only referring to mobile games most of which are already "Free to
Play"...

"The real core of
the micro transaction business is within the mobile part of our business which
is the free-to-play business."

Of course in the same breath he still likes the idea of
milking a franchise...

"It allows someone to take a game that maybe they
played for 1,000 hours and play it for 2,000 hours...We are very conscious that
we don't want to make consumers feel like they're not getting value. We want to
make sure consumers are getting value."

Paying twice for a game isn't much of a value proposition to
me Blake.

So Tomb Raider launched this week and if you happen to have
a high performance Nvidia based gaming rig your experience probably
sucked. Nvidia's on the case but blames
the developer for not getting the code to them on time.

"Unfortunately,
NVIDIA didn't receive final code until this past weekend which substantially
decreased stability, image quality and performance over a build we were
previously provided. We are working closely with Crystal Dynamics to address
and resolve all game issues as quickly as possible.

"In the
meantime, we would like to apologize to GeForce users that are not able to have
a great experience playing Tomb Raider, as they have come to expect with all of
their favorite PC games,"

At this stage in the game (pardon
the pun) why are we still coding games for specific GPU's? That crap should have went by the wayside
somewhere around the last sale of the 3DFX Voodoo 5 cards.

While we're on the subject...SimCity launched this week or
at least that's what everyone expected to happen when they logged in to their
Origin client Tuesday morning (March 5).
Similar to the dreaded "Error 37" suffered on Diablo 3's
launch day users found themselves in endless queues just trying to launch the
game. It got bad enough that Amazon
actually suspended sales with a note on the games product page saying,

"Important Note on "SimCity "Many customers
are having issues connecting to the "SimCity" servers. EA is actively
working to resolve these issues, but at this time we do not know when the issue
will be fixed. Please visit
https://help.ea.com/en/simcity/simcity for more information."

The status of the game was also set to
"Currently unavailable" We don't know when or if this item will be
available again."

Yet another example of a promising game brought down by an
unbridled profit motive. Why pay full
price for a game that's so dependent on being online? Is it DRM or just a part of the EA strategy
to constantly sell you something even after you bought the product.

Just as in Diablo 3 SimCity requires a constant Internet
connection even for single player gameplay.
Which is ridiculous for a so-called Triple-A title. Of course the tech pundits turned tech
apologists acknowledging that this was indeed a problem but that this was the
way things were going to be from now on and citing how "smooth"
Diablo 3 runs now.

Smooth? did we forget
how long it took to get the servers straightened out? or the hacking of the marketplace? I suppose that's all part of
"smooth" If anything kills PC
gaming it's exactly this kind of event where poor planning and unbridled greed
trump common sense. Great job EA and
Square Enix...

In PS4 news it appears that NVIDIA's PhysX and APEX technologies will be showing up
in Sony's next generation console.
Considering it's an AMD GPU, that proves once and for all that the much
hyped physics engine is nothing more than a bit of driver code not exclusive to
NVIDIA hardware.

So as you're enjoying fluttering flags and rippling waves
lapping the shore of some virtual sea remember that apparently NVIDIAs done what AMD couldn't.

It's interesting to note that this week's launch day
failures of two highly anticipated games shared a common flaw. The need to be connected to the
Internet just to play a game (although Tomb Raider is somewhat less draconian in its approach.). Then we
have EA's CFO looking at games as nothing more than an opportunity to nickel
and dime you to death and a pattern starts to reveal itself.

It's all about creating a constant revenue stream instead of
concentrating on making a quality product.
Everyone's got a right to make a buck but sacrificing the core product
for it is inexcusable. When you release
a flawed game like Warfighter or inadequately prepare your infrastructure for a
launch day that requires everyone to phone home, you're not doing your due
diligence.

Worse, the tech pundits have turned tech apologists for the
industry every time we have an event like this and quite simply it needs to
stop. It is NOT acceptable to require an
online connection to play the single player mode of ANY game. It's also NOT acceptable to require an
Internet connection without first adequately preparing the back end to support
it.

I mean, how could you NOT know what the load was going to be
when most games have pre-orders 3 to 6 months out from launch day?

The response, "Oops! so sorry"

Not good enough guys, this isn't your first trip to the
rodeo. There is no excuse but it seems
everyone is making them anyway.

There's no reason to keep accepting this. Remember, you're the customer, the game
industries' bread and butter and you are under no obligation to buy their
wares. It seems the industry has
forgotten that fact and replaced humility with arrogance.

If you want to fix it the answer is simple. If you don't want to be fleeced stop acting
like a sheep. Ignore the industry apologists
and the lame excuses. This is not the
future and NOT the way it has to be but nothing changes until you take
action. Vote with your wallet and
support publishers who focus on a quality product instead of their money machine.

There's an old adage that says build a better mousetrap and
the world will beat a path to your door.
We need to remind the game publishers of that lesson. They need to stop focusing on revenue
projections and start focusing on making a good product. Do that and the revenue will take care of
itself.

Friday, March 1, 2013

This is the first episode of a new video series called "Just Talkin' Tech" It's nothing fancy just me and a friend of mine casually talking over tech topics. Sometimes it's about gaming, sometimes it's about IT. The first one is gaming related and I hope you enjoy the humor. IT related JTT's as I'll call them from now on will show up on my infotechasiseeit blog here...http://infotechasiseeit.blogspot.com

This Week: EA wants
to nickel and dime you, Stand up for your Video game rights! and perfect hair
forever!

Ok, you know how much I hate the money machine that is
gaming by subscription. It's not enough
to overpay for a game now the EA's and Activisions of the world want to keep
charging you for what you should already have.
Now comes a bald faced admission from
EA's CFO and Executive Vice president Blake J. Jorgensen that this is
indeed the new revenue model. His quote...

“The next and much bigger piece is microtransactions within
games. ... we’re building into all of our games the ability to pay for things
along the way, either to get to a higher level to buy a new character, to buy a
truck, a gun, whatever it might be, and consumers are enjoying and embracing
that way of the business,”

That's nice but if the EA and Activisions of the world want
to make it work then the next Battlefield or Call of Duty better start out Free
to Play. Free to Play's not a bad model when
its done correctly. In games like Star
Trek Online I've actually bought upgrades I didn't need just to support what I
felt was a great game. Free to Play and
Microtransactions are synonymous what isn't is charging me an inflated price up
front and expecting me to pay for the game twice.

This isn't gaming related which is exactly the point. Checking my twitter feed found a story about
the upcoming sequel to Will Ferrell's Anchorman , Anchorman 2 on IGN. Why am I getting movie news on a gaming
site? It's not even a movie based on a
game! Stop it!

It seems there's an active gamers lobby to keep the
politicians out of our chosen pastime. The Video Game Voters Network is out to stop
Washington from painting video games with a broad brush. It looks to be a growing grassroots lobby
backed up by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Check them out at the
link below and give yourself a voice louder than any forum post.

HardOCP did a review of the new 140MM Corsair Hydro H90 and
H110 CPU coolers. The big difference? no
frills, no blinkin' lights, no colored coolant and 140mm radiator instead of
the H50/H70's 120MM size. The H90 has a
singlewide (like a mobile home) 140mm radiator while the H110 has a 280mm
radiator. These new coolers are single
core radiators roughly half the thickness of an H70. Check them out at HardOCP

Kotaku decided to let us all know what the next Assassin's
Creed game will be called and even gave a few shots of the box art. Apparently the game is called Assassin's
Creed 4: Black Flag. Due out, who knows,
price? nothing yet. In spite of the
misleading title the game will not have you running around dispatching unruly
household pests armed only with a blade and can of Raid. No, it's all about pirates! Check out the linkto Kotaku to keep up with the unfolding tale of AssCreed 4...

What? It's a contraction...really..

AMD is bragging about hair.
Specifically Lara Croft's hair in the new Tomb Raider scheduled for
release on Tuesday March 5th. Apparently
TresFX is a physics implementation that makes items that are difficult to
realistically render, like hair, look more natural in video games.

Which makes perfect sense since Tomb Raider only allows a
third person view and all of us will naturally be looking at Lara's...hair.

Finally, Battlefield 4 is coming out next year not late this
year. EA Boss Frank Gibeau says it'll
stay in a modern setting. Hmm, we've
already went after the Russians, spent most of our BF time ripping up the
middle east so I guess it's China's turn?

It's also being developed
for next gen consoles like the PS4 and new Xbox. In other words, there's a very real
possibility that Battlefield is about to enter the trap of Call of Duty's
Modern Warfare series. That means It'll
look good but basically be a collection of new DLC following a copycat BF3 storyline. I hope I'm wrong but I wasn't about MW3! Talk about milking a franchise!